The Archer of Beast Woods by Kanata Yanagino

Author:Kanata Yanagino [Yanagino, Kanata]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy
Publisher: J-Novel Club
Published: 2017-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

Whitesails was a wealthy city. The people walking through the streets were wearing clothes dyed in all kinds of colors, and I could see certain tendencies in their hairstyles and accessories.

In short—get this—trends existed here! They had the time and money to think about fashion! Just that fact alone was shocking to me.

In fact, my first shock had come before that, when I entered the city. There was no kind of check required, and no toll to pay to pass through the city gate. I’d subconsciously been assuming that there would be that kind of thing based on what I knew about medieval cities, and I’d been prepared to be kept waiting, but they just let us right in.

“That’s one of His Excellency Ethel’s policies. He’s the one governing this city,” Tonio explained to me.

A huge volume of goods was being sent into this city via the sea route to the north, and spreading to the rest of Southmark via the land routes and waterways as if they were blood vessels. Because there was such an overwhelming amount passing through, stopping it all at the city gate would be a recipe for chaos, and in fact would create a hotbed of smuggling.

So His Excellency Ethel brought in the money needed to run the city by imposing fees for the ships to dock at the wharves, rental fees for space at the market, taxes upon the companies setting up shop within the city, and avoided interfering with the movements of people, goods, and money as much as possible. That was the direction he’d taken, at least for Whitesails, Tonio told me.

I hmm’ed, somewhat impressed. I wasn’t that well versed in economics, but I got the impression that this was quite a progressive, open-minded, and liberal policy.

The way people speak about Duke Ethelbald seems well deserved, I thought as I walked around the city. “Hm? What are those?”

Some kind of pillar-like objects were lined up along the road. Each had something like an... umbrella at the top...?

“Uh, those are streetlights.”

“Streetlights?!”

What?!

“You didn’t know what those were? Oh my God, Will, get with the times! They have the Word of Light engraved on them. Apprentices at the Academy of Sages come around in the evening and light them up. The apprentices get to practice binding mana to Signs, and the city people get to have light during the night as well, so that’s pretty useful.”

“Exactly. It is good training for apprentice sorcerers, and an avenue to earning a little bit of pocket money as well. Similarly,” Tonio said, pointing at a large building ahead of us, “that is another large source of income for sorcerers-in-training. It makes frequent use of the Words of Heat and Purification, after all.”

“Is that—”

“Hehe...” Bee gave me another mischievous laugh. “I bet even you know what that one is,” she said, spinning around on the spot just to be funny. “You guessed it, it’s the balnea!”

Balnea...?

“Hm? Something up, Will?”

“Is something the matter?”

Wait, I knew that word! Wasn’t that a

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